Whos Ready For VJ Day !!!

Every city/urban area greater than about 250,000 people was utterly flattened, as well as every factory, refinery, and working piece of the economy and infrastructure. 12,000,000+ civilians were killed or homeless. The country was on the doorstep of widespread famine and mass-starvation for 3-4 years.

Not saying Japan didn't deserve it. You'll be hard-pressed to find anyone in Japan, even those that lives through that era, that sees themselves as innocent victims. But war is hell, and trying to reduce history to comic book moral simplicity is always exceedingly dangerous.

On the note of a silver lining, they did receive after the war a remarkable bill of rights if I recall correctly.

Mainly prospering thanks to having their military budget slashed to nil.










Now, if only the US could do the same ._.

After all the decimation that occurred from crude technology by todays standards, this quote is pretty accurate imo.

"I do not know what weapons will be used in World War Three, but World War Four will be fought with sticks and stones." -Einstein

Cultural difference treating war differently. If you believe the USA had the same view on the war you are not very bright but.. @ Jaerik How does Japan take Americans celebrating "VJ Day" or is it just ignored mostly

sad to read things like this.

VJ (victory in japan) day marked the end of the most terrible conflict the human race has ever seen. No doubt the single darkest era in human history. over 20% of the worlds population was killed in WWII. that fact alone should be enough to acknowledge and remember the day that it officially ended for your country.

want more reasons? read any book about the Bataan Death March, the first landings at Tarawa, the battles for the pelelui (spelling) island, Iwo jima, the oppression of the phillipines and china and you will not want to forget what day all this horror ended.

moral of the story is... get educated.

I can certainly see this holiday being a damper on the healing process, especially for Japan. IMO it's best to simply leave history to the textbooks, documentaries, and movies and hopefully let ourselves overcome such a drastic incident and not let it weigh down our perception of the present or reality. Observe, acknowledge, but leave it at that ya know?

How exactly do you get "cultural difference treating war differently" out of "cartoons on the other side of the world"?

The reason it's not a government supported is because it would a be hard to sell in Walmart.

The war is generally seen as ancient history. Nobody cares.

There is mild frustration at the US education system, which teaches the war "suddenly" started with Pearl Harbor. As though a nation of very bright, successful military commanders randomly woke up one day and stupidly decided that was a terrific idea.

However, there is very little hostility towards the US. Most Japanese (especially the younger generations) accept themselves as the aggressor and are fine with the consequences.

It helps that the average Japanese had little to do with the war. It was mostly the creation of a civilian government which had become overly militarized, and mega-corporations like Mitsubishi, who both controlled the government and also had a lot to gain by pushing for an endless war of expansion. ("We'll sell you the planes and do the clean-up afterwards, and donate the profits to your re-election campaign!")

Once the war was over, it was fairly easy for the average civilian to move on with their lives, minus the whole "every city flattened" and "famine" thing.

Except for the ones who were badly burned and the ones born later, with deformation, due to radiation from the bombs.

Those exact reasons were why I thought the OP was being facetious.
well not those exact reasons, but the general idea I should say.

Deformities caused by Uranium/Radiation poisoning are NOT a pretty thing. As 'not give a ***' as I am, the sight of it bothered me.

The bombs were, at risk of sounding callous towards the victims, quite tiny. (On the order of 15 kilotons. The US's standard bombs are 1000 times larger now.) Hiroshima and Nagasaki were livable again within relatively short order, and are now some of the largest and nicest cities in Japan.

There was also widespread confusion in the aftermath of the bomb. Even in the US, the cause and effects of radiation were not well known. (Thousands of US servicemen suffered radiation poisoning by being ordered to clean up US nuclear bomb tests.) In Japan, the effects were seen as an unknown disease, possibly biological warfare. They didn't know if it was contagious, how it spread, what caused it, etc. This resulted in a lot of those effected by radiation being ostracized and quickly forgotten.

They were devastating then, regardless of what today's bombs can do.

Ignorance can lead to horrible things.

Ignorance means not knowing, as in "they didn't know...". Ignorance could also be to blame for the fact that what people don't understand, they fear or hate. In this case, they feared the victims of radiation, due to not knowing about the effects. It's ignorance.

haha yea just realized like 10 seconds after my post hence the deleted post, oddly ironic, but please forgive my ignorance lol

Word.

Hey now, give me some credit...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Momotaro%27s_Divine_Sea_Warriors

...not entirely a gross generalisation. To imply that after the war there was no cultural indoctrination that resulted in the artform changing is a contentious point also, I would think.

It's fine to be nihon-o-phile--certainly I am a fan myself--but it's just as bad to be hide-bound to "modern counter-cultural perspectives" as it is to be hide-bound to "traditional historical perspectives" as well, to be fair?

I'm an American and i think it was a punk move on the part of the US to use "WMD" against Japanese civilians. I understand that a good bit of the military infrastructure was intertwined within the cities of japan... but still, pearl harbor was a 100% a military target. (Regardless of who struck first) The truth of the matter is that America realized there was a chance they could actually lose the war.. so out of fear they just drop atomic bombs on Japanese cities. If anyone deserved to be blown nearly off the map, it was Germany.

I think I misunderstood your original post to imply that anime never existed until after WW2. That it was newly-hatched, post-WW2 managaka trying to imitate Disney that somehow created the medium.

Actually I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with fear of losing the war, it has to do with how many troops would be lost if we were to of continued fighting the Japanese in traditional combat before the threat was neutralized, the Atomic Bomb was unleashed to force Japan into a quick surrender.

I could have my time lines messed up, but I'm pretty sure by the time we dropped the bombs, things were already going to ***for both Japan and Germany..

Wasn't Astro Boy around the time of WWII, or soon after?

Please check your history. Check up on the casualty projections for an invasion of Japan. The US and allies were in no danger of losing, it was a question of the cost of winning. The deaths involved, both military and civilian, Japanese and American, were projected to be atrocious. Look at how tenaciously the Japanese held onto small islands. Think of how they'd fight for their home soil. Using the bombs was actually an act of mercy, if you look at it from the right perspective.

There were a ton of reasons why we dropped the bomb. Another big one was the USSR. At the end of WW2 in Europe, as the US's pseudo-allies on the Eastern Front, they controlled half the continent and weren't wild about giving it up. The US was deathly afraid that the USSR would similarly occupy Japan if the US didn't demonstrate an impossibly strong showing right at the end. The Cold War had started the moment Germany surrendered.

History's crazy complex. The trouble is, it's also pretty boring. So most people only learn the black and white, us versus them, good versus evil version that corresponds to their own country's point of view. And if you try to explain the intricacies of cause and effect to/from every side, you get called a "historical revisionist" or "moral relativist."

Tezuka was inspired by movies such as "Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei".

I happen to like history, though. As for good and evil, in war, there usually isn't good and evil, just differences of opinion, culture, etc. (Inb4 FFVIII)

I don't know how to feel about this holiday..

As terrible as dropping the bombs was, do you realized how many American lives were saved by not invading Japan? It wasn't that America was on the brink of losing the war as much as it was a decision to either invade and waste hundreds of thousands of American lives, or introduce a new weapon to substain America as a super power with the most powerful weapons at the time.

To give a little bit of credit to the US, Japan was warned about the possiblity of massive destruction if they did not surrender. Although I don't like the fact on how many civilains was killed, it was a war.. I'm pretty sure no other country would give a rats *** if they bombed either you or me if we went to war. (I live pretty close to a big military base, it's that is a possiblity for me.)